We have a young couple from Pasadena as customers (he is in production, she is a working actress) who came in on Friday to buy a couple of cases of wine and related the following:

We opened this 1990 Brunello we bought here a few years ago for a special dinner party and, after we poured it, every one of the ten guests had exactly the same reaction: "This smells exactly like a urinal!"

I am bracing myself for a rant about how the wine ruined their party and a demand for a refund when the girl says with a demonic glow in her eyes "But THEN, when we put it in our mouths, it was God's tears, the best wine of the year, it made my Porcini Truffle risotto sing!"

In this day and age of hyper sterilized, filtered to extinction wines the mere fact they DID put it in their mouths and learn something about the Funk and how wines from the dark side of the tracks are often the most interesting truly impressed us. They were even upset that we did not have any more.

Roberto, the Funkmeister General

PS: I attended a broad tasting of "Italian" wines at a customers house last night where 90% of them were di Grazia science projects that tasted like aussie Shiraz and the hands down favorite of the crowd was a bottle of ultra-traditional, get on the good foot and shake your fat booty Bea Montefalco Rosso that I had slipped into the mix. People were shocked, SHOCKED that a wine could have no apparent fruit yet so transcend mere grape juice and become WINE.

Sorry 'bout that, Roberto ol' bean, but that couple's attributes ("he is in production, she is a working actress") don't exactly annoint 'em with a whole lot of credibility in my world, so I moved on after the first sentence. Don't envy you trying to earn a living in that surreal environment.

Hotwine, "surreal" is all a matter of perspective. I grew up in a suburb of NYC, then lived in Vermont for several years. Now I've moved to New York, to Brooklyn. Going back and forth visiting friends and family, it all seems surreal sometimes. I've found that hipsters can have as much credibility as hicksters, and vice versa.

Roberto, I don't want to go over those kinds of stories--they make me crazy...but I have a lot of 'em, like the woman who claimed every one of the six wines she had just tasted had a strawberry quality about them. That was when I asked her what flavor lipstick she had smeared over her lips--you guessed it!

A) the fact that he is an Academy Award winning film editor and she is a regluar in local legit theatre and some art films has NOTHING to do with their love of wine and their travelling the globe when possible to pursue that love. Verne, a LOT of people would dismiss "Arizona based carpet manufacturer" with the same flick of the wrist but WE know better...

B) The wine in question DOES have an intense acrid, barnyardy nose when first opened yet the wine IS amazing.

C) The point of my post was to congratulate them for having the knowledge and courage to dive in and drag their friends along for the ride...

I was at a tasting of "Italian Wines" (but mostly diGrazia science projects) recently where some yahoo was going on about how ALL wine must be "clean" and "balanced in all aspects" to be any good, completely ignoring the funky side of many of the world's very best wines and the fact that that missing or overwrought component in a wine tasted by itself may in fact be either supplied by or exist in order to compliment some aspect of the typical cuisine of the zone of production.

To Robertos' credit hes' given me a different slant on actually drinking wine instead of evaluating it. I was wont to dismiss wines by their nose only until I put some of the funk into the ole' mouth. Some wines thar small like ca-ca taste like ambrosia. Congrats to them kids in their bent to experiment. Had I done this 20-30 years ago I'da had a heck of a lot of great burgandies now residing in the ole' cooler-box at 10-15 bucksa' clatter. WW [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/biggrin.gif[/img]